"The freedom party in comparison: Radical right parties in Western Europe"

Abstract

What is a radical right party? Radical right parties are not new to the political scene. Different parties have come and gone over the last century. What is different about the radical right parties of the 1980s and 1990s is their staying power, and their impact on the mainstream parties. The rise of new parties on the right in the 1980s led to a great deal of controversy over how these parties would be defined. On the other hand, there is little argument regarding their challenge to established party systems in Western Europe. I will argue in this paper that there are many similarities between the radical right parties in France, Germany and Austria. I begin by comparing different authors' definitions of extreme or radical right parties, and develop my own definition of a radical right party. I then describe the radical right parties and their histories in section III. Section IV provides a description of the nationalism that defines radical right parties, and the positions they have taken on immigration, economics, and the mainstream parties. Despite differences in their historical development, the parties I will be describing have taken very similar positions on issues such as immigration and the European Union.